Author Archives: Ron Bieber

Clayton Christensen – Capturing the Upside

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Yesterday during my commute I listened to a presentation that Clayton Christensen did at the 2004 Open Source Business Conference called Open Source: Capturing the Upside While Avoiding the Downside that was published at ITConversations. Its basically a two hour presentation on the theories published in his books The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, which attempts to explain why at a certain point in a companies life, good management can tank the company and how managers can continue creating growth companies by using the theory of disruption to figure out their strategies.

The first book goes into great detail into explaining his theory of “disruption”, using the floppy disk drive industry, PC industry, and steel industry for concrete examples of disruptive technologies and the conditions in which these technologies are introduced so that they can begin to take a market while not being noticed or cared about by the incumbents in the market.

The books are fascinating, and the keynote mentioned above is an excellent 2 hour audio primer on the content of the books. I was riveted to the presentation in the car as Christensen presents, in very simple yet effective terms, his theory and provides examples of situations in which the theory has applied.

An added bonus in the two hour presentation, since it is at an open source convention, is the explanation of how open source fits into the model of disruption, with contributions from people such as Tim O’Reilly and one employee from MySQL.

The most interesting thing I got out of this presentation was the explanation of commodization and decommodization, as it is explained in terms that I finally get. I had a hard time with these areas in the book, which could be because I was attempting to read multiple books at the same time, or just that I didn’t get it in print. The explanation of these concepts made complete sense as they were explained verbally and I found this section quite enlightening, especially when applying them to things I am seeing in certain areas around my professional life.

I would highly recommend that those in management, especially those responsible for defining strategy for the organization, grab this podcast and give it a listen. The concepts involved are quite interesting and general enough that you can apply them to your professional life. This was probably the most beneficial two hours I’ve spent commuting to work. The content was good enough that I did not even mind the drive.

Adam Curry Discussion on ITConversations

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A friend of mine pointed me over to ITConversations as a source for good tech podcasts. The first one I downloaded was the 90 minute interview with Adam Curry about the origins and possible future of podcasting. I found the whole conversation really interesting. I especially enjoyed his explanation of the role that is being filled by the Podsafe Music Network as essentially an implementation of the current processes used in the radio industry.

Today I’ve grabbed two additional podcasts to listen to on the way to and from work from this site. The first, an interview with Clayton Christensen (author of The Innovator’s Dilemma) called Capturing the Upside and following that, a panel discussion on Folksonomies.

Have I mentioned how nice it is to have commercial free programming to listen to on the way to work that is tailored to my tastes? I haven’t listened to the radio in weeks.

Those Freakonomics Guys Guest Blog on Google

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While browsing the Google Blog yesterday I ran across a post written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics fame about a presentation they gave for Google.

The thing that struck me most was the description of the Google environment. Aside from the actual description of the buildings at the beginning of the post, the following section really hit me as something worth noting:

After our talk, we spent a few minutes hanging around with miscellaneous Googlers. This was the most impressive slice of the day; not only were they all smart and inquisitive and friendly, but they were so damn happy. For instance, there’s surely no company in the world where so many employees wear t-shirts with their company logo, which we took to be a sign of deep pride (or perhaps simply a deep discount).

It struck me (and I guess given the bloggers identity that it might be helpful to find the data and look at it) that one of the reasons they don’t see more employees wearing t-shirts with their company logos is that many companies are still in the mindset in which their self-importance push dress codes on their employees in which t-shirts aren’t even part of the dress code. I think the value that a casual dress code brings to those who do not necessarily have physical customer contact is note quite what companies think it is. What it normally does for those people who have no customer or vendor contact is irritate them, which in turn, has a negative effect on morale of the departments rather than the expected behavior of “causing employees to act more professional”.

Some of the most energetic IT shops I’ve worked in have had casual dress codes and have been run like small, independent companies. The casual dress code changes peoples attitudes for the better, in my opinion, because it removes the possibility that you are being judged by how you dress and more for what you DO, which is the most important part of our industry anyway.

Just one more example of how Google “gets it”. It’s must be pretty damn cool to have the Freakonomics guys think that the most “impressive slice of their day” was hanging out with a group of employees that seemed invested (in the emotional sense), happy, and proud and know it was your company they were talking about.